HUA HIN, Thailand - Following its departure from mainland China last month,
Google is taking a harder stance against Internet censorship. In its stated
mission to do no evil, the world’s most prosperous Internet search company
recently introduced a tool to track government requests for it to remove data
and censor its services.
The numbers released by Google this week for the last six months of 2009 show a
country-by-country breakdown on government demands in the 100 or so countries
that it operates. Brazil topped the list both for data requests and removal
requests. China appeared as a red question mark with the statement
"Chinese officials consider censorship demands as state secrets, so we cannot
disclose that information at this time" next to it.
The removal of child pornography or copyrighted material on YouTube was not
included in the figures, as Google does this anyway. The company added that the
information was incomplete and that it was working on improving the tool, which
can be found here
The company claims that its services are still blocked in a quarter of the
countries in which it operates. "Google products - from search and Blogger to
YouTube and Google Docs - have been blocked in 25 of the 100 countries where we
offer our services," stated Rachel Whetstone, vice president for global
communications and public affairs.
The Google tool does not show the whole censorship picture as it gives no
indication of what governments themselves block users from seeing. Internet
censorship is on the increase, especially in non-democratic countries that want
to restrict the freedom of information flow and stifle dissidents and
opposition. According to OpenNet Initiative, 40 countries censor the Internet,
compared with just a few in 2002. [1]
Despite its efforts to hinder Internet censorship, Google is still entrenched
in its own battles with privacy advocates, as 10 nations called on the company
to build more privacy protection into its services this week.
Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand,
Spain and the United Kingdom signed a letter addressing issues caused by the
rollout of Buzz, Google's social networking platform, and the often intrusive
nature of the Street View system. Buzz caused a fiasco when Google allowed
people's private information and common correspondents to become shared and
public (see Partnership
buzz, February 27, 2010).
The letter stated that "the privacy rights of the world's citizens are being
forgotten as Google rolls out new technological applications." If the data that
is made public by the company is causing privacy concerns, imagine what lies
beneath the digital iceberg accessible to Google alone.
Software
Microsoft is also taking a tougher stance this week, in this case on
counterfeit software, with a plan to open regional crime laboratories in an
effort to curb software piracy. Nine labs staffed by forensic experts will be
evaluating half the million pieces of evidence submitted to the company each
year regarding counterfeit products.
"Tens of thousands of people have contacted [us] to complain that one or
another third party had sold them software that turned out to be counterfeit,"
stated David Finn, Microsoft associate general counsel.
By using innovative intelligence techniques, the labs will be better equipped
to target pirates such as the recently dismantled Chinese software syndicate
that reportedly produced more than US$2 billion worth of counterfeit software
to 27 countries.
Despite its losses to pirates, Microsoft still managed to post a 35% surge in
first-quarter net profit from a year earlier to $4.01 billion. The figures
released this week were a direct result of strong Windows 7 sales. The
operating system has so far succeeded where Vista failed and is continuing to
gain momentum as PC sales also show recovery.
Telecoms
Apple's usual guarded stance regarding its product line backfired this week,
when tech website Gizmodo published detailed information on a new 4G iPhone
prototype that had aficionados and fanboys speculating over the new handset,
which is not expected to be formally unveiled for a few months.
The top-secret device was left in a bar in Silicon Valley, much to the chagrin
of the Apple employee who left it there but to the delight of its finder, who
proceeded to publish images of it on the Internet and sold it to the gadget
blog for $5,000.
Apple has declined to comment on what could be viewed as a very devious
marketing ploy, although engineers at the company have confirmed the
authenticity of the device. It was dissected and reviewed by Gizmodo, which
received over 11 million page views for the article. The new smartphone looks
remarkably similar to the company's existing product, although it has slightly
squarer edges, is a little thinner and has re-styled buttons. We are now
waiting for news of lawsuits from Steve Jobs and company.
Security
Anti-virus company McAfee found itself with digital egg on its face after a
defective security update crashed thousands of corporate Windows XP computers.
The buggy update turned the software's defenses against malware against itself,
which resulted in the deletion of critical Windows files, causing rebooting and
the dreaded blue screen of death.
Hundreds of companies, universities and police departments that relied on the
usually sturdy anti-virus protection were affected. McAfee released an apology
and a patch to fix the software, though too late to prevent IT administrators
having a very bad day on Wednesday.
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